What We Owe to Rachel Carson

Chesapeake Bay Foundation – March 14, 2019In honor of Women’s History Month, we are looking back at some of the natural world’s greatest heroines. And perhaps there’s no one more deserving of that descriptor than Rachel Carson. Back in 1962—before there was an Earth Day, or EPA, or even a Chesapeake Bay Foundation—marine biologist, writer, and conservationist Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. The book that started it all, Spring is credited for launching the environmental movement. In it, Carson investigates the damage that the fast-growing use ofDDTto control insects had inflicted on birds and other wildlife, and eventually humans. Despite the initial uproar after the book’s release (“What she wrote started a national quarrel,” said CBS Reports in a one-hour special shortly after the book was published), Carson ultimately changed the way people look at the natural world. Read full blog post here.

What if we could use nature to prevent disasters?

The World Bank – March 5, 2019 – VideoHeavy rain and severe flooding brought the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka, to its knees. In China’s Yangtze River Basin, rivers spilled their banks, inundating towns and villages. In Mobile Bay, Alabama, strong ocean waves carried away valuable coastline. In each of these locations, disasters caused by natural hazards seemed beyond human control. But instead of focusing only on building more drains, seawalls and dams, these governments turned to nature for protection from the disasters. Several years later, the urban wetlands, oyster reefs and flood plains they helped establish are now keeping their citizens safe while nourishing the local economies. Read full blog post and view video here.

Aquaculture Doesn’t Reduce Pressure on Wild Fish

By Brian Owens – Hakai Magazine – March 7, 2019Aquaculture is often promoted as a sustainable alternative to catching wild fish—a way to reduce pressure on overexploited stocks while providing affordable and necessary protein for people’s diets. It’s an argument put forward by major international organizations like the World Bank and the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. But it’s an argument that doesn’t hold up, according to new research. Read full article here.

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Are Turning Up in Puget Sound Marine Life

By Hannah Thomasy – Hakai Magazine – March 4, 2019In Washington State’s Puget Sound, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are infecting the area’s harbor seals and harbor porpoises. A recent preliminary survey of 11 animals has produced worrying results: 80 percent of animals sampled carried bacteria that were resistant to an antibiotic, and more than 50 percent carried bacteria that were resistant to multiple antibiotics. “These animals are sentinels,” says Stephanie Norman, a veterinary epidemiologist with Marine-Med who is working to understand the causes and the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the region’s marine mammals—a project supported by a wide range of local and state organizations. “Studying these animals gives us a nice profile of the health of the Puget Sound area,” she says. Read full article here.

What counts as extreme temperature is a moving target

By Sarah DeWeerdt – Anthropocene Magazine – February 26, 2019 With climate change, weather patterns that were unusual in the past (ahem, February heat waves in London) are becoming more common. But how exactly do people recognize unusual weather conditions? Scientists use various benchmarks – 1850, the past 30 years, and so on – when quantifying climate change, but there’s been very little research on how members of the general public develop a baseline sense of “normal” climate or how that sense changes over time. The first large-scale study to tackle this problem, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that the public’s climatic baseline tends to be a very recent one, reflecting weather experienced roughly 2 to 8 years ago.Read full article here.

Restoring streamside vegetation using grazing and beavers

By Kurt Fesenmyer – Trout Unlimited – February 22, 20 19 – VideoIf youment the BLM uses to evaluate the overall condition or impairment of streams and streamside vegetation on the 248 million acres the agency manages in the western U.S. The objective of many BLM management efforts is to shift streams that have been degraded by stressors such as drought, wildfire, and historical grazing practices from a non-functioning designation to a proper functioning designation, and then make sure they stay that way. But how exactly do you do that, especially for such a massive landscape?Read full blog post and view video here.

The wonder of water

By Laura Paskus – NM Political Report – February 14, 2019 – Video
“How’s your day today?” the grocery store cashier asks. “Oh my God,” I can’t stop myself. Even though I know the checker wasn’t expecting anything more than the requisite, “Fine and you?” response. I launch into a hand-waving homage to the day: I just got back from the Sandias, where there’s this little spring, and I learned the coolest thing. Scientists can tell if springs, like that come out of the mountain…they can figure out if that groundwater came from summer monsoons, or from winter snowmelt. Because get this: They study the water’s isotopes. Then, because our winter storms and our summer storms come from different places in the ocean, you can tell where the water originated and what season the water fell, as snow or summer rain, before it became groundwater! Read full story and view video here.

Dam Removal in 2018 – Another Successful Year of Freeing Rivers

By Jessie Thomas-Blate – American Rivers – February 20, 2019
Communities seeking relief from flooding caused by increasingly intense storms. Fish seeking refuge from warming downstream waters. Parents seeking solace when their child has been pulled into the undertow of the base of an artificial waterfall (aka a dam). Landowners pouring money into failing, obsolete structures, or perhaps pretending they do not exist at all… just waiting for the next big storm to knock them down. The reality of living in a world with a changing climate is real, and we must ensure that we actively work towards making our rivers and communities more resilient. Now is the time to revive our rivers and streams— the lifeblood of our nation. The good news is that we are making progress. Read full story here.

Find Your Climate-Altered Future On A New Interactive Map

By Timothy B. Wheeler – Bay Journal – February 12, 2019 Ever had trouble picturing how climate change could alter the quality of life in your community? Now there’s a map for that. Using a statistical technique called “climate-analog mapping,” two researchers have matched hundreds of cities in the United States and Canada with places that currently have the climate those cities are projected to have decades hence. Read full blog post here.

The Rising Tide of Climate Injustice

By Clinton Parks – Undark – February 14, 2019Chesapeake Avenue, in the Salters Creek neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia, sits atop a seawall that shields it from the Hampton Roads, the body of water that connects the mouths of the James and Elizabeth Rivers to the Chesapeake Bay near where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The avenue stretches 2.5 miles east from Newport News to neighboring Hampton. Many of the adjacent neighborhoods, including Salters Creek, where I grew up, sit just a few meters above sea level. Here, the seawall is quite literally a last line of protection against climate change. Read full story here.